Dimness, dampness, and the suffocating stench of mold.
That was Lin En's first impression of this world after transmigrating.
Along with it came wave after wave of teeth-grating scratching outside the door, like nails scraping a chalkboard-with fucking amplification.
Bang!
Something enormous slammed into the wooden door, sending dust cascading down.
In the faint moonlight, Lin En could vaguely make out a massive black shape standing outside.
It had to be at least three meters tall and gave off a foul stench like canned herring fermented for three months mixed with an outhouse.
Even more despairingly, Lin En couldn't so much as cover his nose.
Because he had transmigrated into a stone statue.
More precisely, a dilapidated divine statue covered in cobwebs, with a gaping crack across its forehead.
Before him, a translucent blood-red panel flashed wildly, like an alarm warning of imminent death:
[Warning! Faith points are about to reach zero!] [Current status: Divine Core critically endangered!] [Countdown to Divine Core collapse: 29 minutes 50 seconds... 29 minutes 49 seconds...] Ten thousand alpacas were stampeding through Lin En's mind. Other transmigrators either started off with a broken engagement and a declaration that their fortunes would turn, or became rich young heirs who drove sports cars and picked up girls. But when his turn came, he became some bush-league false god in a godforsaken backwater, with just half an hour before his soul scattered into oblivion without even leaving ashes behind! **Bang! Bang!** The pounding outside grew increasingly frenzied, and a crack had already opened in the middle of the flimsy door. A thick arm dripping yellow-green pus forced its way through and began clawing blindly at the air. Just then, a faint sob came from beneath the statue. Lin En desperately rolled his nonexistent eyes downward and saw a girl kneeling on a prayer cushion. She looked fourteen or fifteen at most, as skinny as a matchstick brought to life. Clutching a rusty cross, her face smeared with tears and snot, she desperately prayed to Lin En's statue. "Great Lord of Ashes... please send down your divine punishment and drive away the filth outside..." "Sivir doesn't want to be eaten... sob..." Seeing the girl bow until her forehead split open, Lin En felt a surge of despair himself. *Stop praying, girl!* *Haven't you heard you shouldn't worship random roadside gods?* *Even if you smash your head to pieces, I can't conjure up a Gatling gun to save you!* *This lousy statue is shedding stone chips faster than dandruff. I can't even save myself!* The monster outside seemed to catch the scent of the living person within. It suddenly let out a piercing, inhuman roar that shook loose dirt from the church's entire roof. *That's it. I'm going to die here.* Lin En was already prepared to close his eyes and make his final exit. Just as the monster was about to break through the door, a crisp **ding** suddenly rang out deep within his mind. Then an emotionless mechanical voice drowned out the roaring outside:
[Host's imminent demise detected. The Fourth Calamity System has forcibly bound itself to the host!]
[Scanning current plane coordinates... scan complete.]
[Establishing an interplanar soul-link channel... destination: Blue Star.]
Lin En's numbed consciousness instantly perked up. *A system?* *My cheat finally arrived!*
[The host may disguise the current real world as a 100% immersive virtual reality game and use the system to distribute closed-beta access to players on Earth.]
[Players' killing, construction, and even emotional fluctuations after arrival will all be converted into your faith points.]
[Notice: your remaining faith points are only sufficient to create five of the most basic starting mortal bodies.]
[Please compose a promotional game link immediately and distribute it across Blue Star's internet!] ```
After hearing the system's explanation, Lin En understood instantly.
It wanted him to recruit conscripts!
He just had to trick Blue Star's "Fourth Catastrophe"—the crowd that would slap even a dog passing by twice—into coming over as unpaid labor.
Let's do it!
This is my only chance to survive!
By now, the door was barely holding together. The mutated butcher had pressed its horizontally split maw against the gap, drooling as it stared at the little nun inside.
"System, generate a game link for me right now! Call it... Awakening of the Old Gods!"
"Don't bother with a big promotional campaign. There's no time-the shorter, the better! Spam it across every major gaming forum, message board, and social group!"
Meanwhile.
On Blue Star, it was exactly 11:30 p.m.
In this era, Blue Star's virtual reality technology was already quite mature. Almost every household owned a VR headset or a cheap gaming pod.
But while the technology had advanced, game content was still the same old three tricks.
Reskins, gacha pulls, and 648-yuan top-ups!
The world had suffered under cash-grabbing online games for far too long!
Inside a male dorm room at a university.
Lu Ziye, a sophomore, lay listlessly on his bed, wearing a VR headset and endlessly scrolling through posts in the "New Game Chatter" section of a major gaming forum.
He was a hardcore gaming fanatic who went by the username [Passing Pure-Love Warrior].
Right now, he was seething after playing a supposedly "epic," revolutionary VR blockbuster that turned out to be a trash online game running like a slideshow.
"What a piece of garbage. Hitting things feels like chopping cotton, and they call this revolutionary!"
"Try fucking surpassing Run, Big Bear first!"
Still grumbling, Lu Ziye was about to leave the section.
Suddenly, the page refreshed, and an utterly out-of-place post shot straight to the top of the front page.
Its title was outrageously bold, too:
[Awakening of the Old Gods, a revolutionary, 100% realistic immersive VR online game!]
[First Closed Beta limited to five players! Dark, hardcore Cthulhu survival! No grinding, no pay-to-win! Start with a top-tier foreign loli NPC!]
[No queues! Click and play!]
Lu Ziye paused.
You're revolutionary too?
Could there actually be another contender?
Then he sneered.
"One hundred percent realistic?"
"These third-rate developers really will make any outrageous claim now. Aren't they afraid of breaking advertising laws?"
He opened the post, intending to tear it apart, only to find there wasn't even a decent CGI trailer inside-just a bare download link.
And the installation package's size... Holy shit. One kilobyte?
You're not even fucking pretending anymore, huh?
"This has to be a Trojan, right? Or some variant of Panda Burning Incense?"
His roommate, eating instant noodles on the lower bunk, leaned over for a look and curled his lip. "Don't click that, Lu. You might fry your headset's motherboard. You've still got dozens of gigs of 'study materials' saved in there."
"Who gives a damn!"
Lu Ziye's contrary streak kicked in. "This headset's a piece of junk I bought from that secondhand 'Seafood Market' app. There's nothing in it!"
"Today, I'm going to see just what tricks this hacker can pull!"
It was the middle of the night, and he had nothing better to do anyway. Fearlessness was the name of the game.
Without hesitation, Lu Ziye clicked download, then selected [Run now].
He wasn't the only one.
With Blue Star's enormous population, there were bound to be a few thrill-seeking oddballs whose mental states were far ahead of their time, and they opened that one-kilobyte installation package.
Beep!
Almost the instant the program launched, the VR interface before Lu Ziye's eyes went completely black.
Then an indescribable sense of weightlessness struck, as though someone had stuffed him into a washing machine and cranked up the spin cycle.
"Holy shit! It really is a virus..."
Before Lu Ziye could spit out a second curse, his consciousness plunged into complete darkness.
Before you continue